“What Happened at the Hague?”

                                        by Joe Conley, Princeton Greens 

The failure of these talks is a disaster. No words can truly express our anger.

—Friends of the Earth.

The banner unfurled by protesters at the November climate talks in the The Hague said it all: “Industry Lobbyists and the Government Officials Who Do Their Bidding…How Will Our Grandchildren Forgive You?”  On November 25, the two-week long global climate conference ended with no agreement  by the parties on how to implement the accords reached in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 to address global warming.   The ultimate sticking point in the talks was a disagreement between the United States-led “umbrella group” (including Canada, Australia, and Japan) and the European Union over a U.S. plan that would have allowed nations to count the carbon dioxide absorbed by grasslands and forests towards emissions-reduction targets set forth at Kyoto.

    The U.S., which produces nearly one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases, came to the meeting proposing that it should be able to satisfy up to half of its emission-cutting target by counting its vast forested regions as so-called “carbon sinks.”  The U.S. side has argued that because plants and trees draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere during photosynthesis, countries with substantial forests should be credited for the possession of these natural sinks. 

    The essential inequity of this plan need scarcely be remarked.  The U.S. and Canada both possess vast territories with extensive forested lands unmatched in European countries.  The “carbon sink” proposal would disproportionately benefit countries which can claim such large tracts of forests.  Indeed, for many representatives at the talks the U.S. plan represented little more than a ruse by which the world’s leading polluter could continue to avoid the difficult domestic political decisions involved in enacting real cuts in fossil fuel emissions.   As German Environment Minister Juergen Tritten said after the collapse of the talks: “The refusal of some industrial nations to give climate protection priority at home caused the failure. It also failed because industrial countries wanted to count too much their natural forests as a source of man-made reduction rather than actually cutting greenhouse gases.”

    While U.S. negotiators at the talks cast recriminations at   European Union nations, particularly Germany and France, for the failure to reach a deal, there was widespread agreement among the European delegation and environmental groups that the U.S. plan was simply unacceptable.  French Environment Minister Dominique Voynet commented on the intransigence of the U.S. position after the collapse of the talks. `` It would have been a failure,” Voynet said, “not to wage a battle, to keep posturing on principles or sign a bad climate agreement.”[1]   Meanwhile, environmental and public-interest groups at the talks were clearly frustrated with the failure to reach an agreement at The Hague.  Environmental groups, meanwhile, saw the failure in the Hague as a major setback. Greenpeace said in a statement, “This meeting will be remembered as the moment when governments abandoned the promise of global cooperation to protect Planet Earth.”[2] 

    The failure to reach an agreement in November reflected fundamental flaws in the U.S. approach to the implementation of the Kyoto accords.  As the Guardian remarked: “The whole international effort had been hijacked and corrupted by America’s ideological obsession with the disciplines of the market as a panacea for all ills.  Scientists are uncertain about how and whether carbon sinks work at all; some estimated that the U.S. proposals would lead to massive increases in emissions.  Secondly, the consequences of the U.S. market-based approach (perhaps intentionally) with its highly technical negotiations, alienated any sustained public interest.  It has become a textbook case of how to kill of public participation.”[3] 

    Indeed, the continued U.S. insistence on what it calls “flexible,” market-based mechanisms for meeting emissions targets has represented little more than an effort to evade any real cuts in fossil fuel emissions. Building upon earlier proposals for meeting emissions targets through a system whereby emission credits could be exchanged with less developed countries, the recent focus on counting so-called “carbon sinks” is merely the latest (and perhaps most clever) attempt to find loop holes that would ensure the great polluter the right to keep right on polluting.  In fact, the U.S. plan introduced at The Hague would have allowed the U.S. to actually increase emissions of greenhouse gases by 8 percent, rather than reducing them by 7 percent as was agreed at Kyoto.[4]

    On one level, the breakdown in the talks represents another example of the failure to effectively reign in multinational capital in order to temper social and environmental costs.  Powerful multinationals, especially in the U.S., have funded extensive lobbying campaigns aimed at thwarting the implementation of any treaty calling for significant cuts in fossil fuel emissions.  The electrical utilities, oil companies, and automobile manufacturers have been closely following the series of conferences on the implementation of Kyoto. Lobbyists for these industries have had enormous success in preventing significant emissions-reductions targets from ever reaching the negotiating table. As the Guardian put it,  “In the Hague the big American polluters effectively had a veto on the radical measures needed to reduce carbon emissions.”[5]  

    To track down this informal veto power of corporate America, one might look first to the U.S Senate.  Any international treaty of which the U.S. is a signatory must be ratified by the Senate before it becomes law.  Even before the initial Kyoto agreement of 1997, the Senate passed a resolution introduced by Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NB) in a 95-0 vote that stated that any treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions must not result in harm to the U.S. economy and must also involve commitments from developing countries, such as India and China, that they will also comply with the first round of emissions-reduction targets.  Since then, Hagel and other high-ranking Republican Senators like Frank Murkowski (R-AK), the powerful chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, have made it clear that Kyoto would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate.  There was some truth then in the words of the chief U.S. negotiator at The Hague, Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, Frank Loy, who said after the collapse of the talks,  “Nations can only negotiate abroad what they believe they can ratify at home.  The United States is not in the business of signing up to agreements it knows it cannot fulfill.”

    The Senate remains the fundamental obstacle to reaching a position on the U.S. side that would be acceptable to the European Union and much of the rest of the world.  Not surprisingly, the Senate is the prime target for industry groups seeking to prevent emissions reductions at any cost.  An industry-backed Political Action Committee (PAC) called the Global Climate Coalition (GCC)—whose contributors include Amoco, Chevron, Union Pacific, General Motors, and Ford—has poured tens of millions of dollars of soft money into the campaigns of those it believes will prevent significant movement in Congress on measures to address global warming.  According to data collected by the campaign finance watchdog group Commoncause, Senators Murkowski, Hagel, and Larry Craig (R-ID)—key players on the issue in the Senate—have all received more than $100,000 in PAC money from the GCC over the past decade.  “The GCC,” according to Commoncause, “is composed of and funded by industries—including oil, chemical, electric utility, and transportation interests—who are most concerned with the impact of emission reduction policies.”[6] 

    Hagel, Murkowski, and Craig have continued to maintain views on the issue that, at the very least, could be characterized as sympathetic to the perspective of industry. In the process, they have aligned themselves with what are increasingly seen as marginal positions on at least two issues of major importance. First, they have espoused the idea that global warming really isn’t as imminent or threatening as it has been made out to be. And second, they have dramatically overplayed the economic costs of implementing the Kyoto accords by continuing to cite studies that many familiar with the issue consider misleading or wildly inaccurate. 

    On September 28, 2000 Hagel chaired a hearing on the upcoming Hague conference at which Undersecretary of State, Frank Loy, was called upon to give an update on the Clinton Administration’s negotiating position on the implementation of Kyoto.  Hagel said in his opening statement that he believed the jury was still out on the scientific evidence for global warming and its consequences. “One by one,” he said, “reports have come out showing the early doomsday predictions to be not only grossly overstated, but quite inaccurate.  The uncertainties and complexities of the climate change question have become more and more apparent as we look at it more scientifically.”  Murkowski, meanwhile, offered some doomsday predictions of his own; but it was an economic doomsday scenario that he predicted, if the Kyoto accords were ever implemented.  “If we were to adopt Kyoto,” he said, “here is what an American consumer could face in the year 2010: Approximately 53 percent higher gasoline prices, 86 percent higher electric prices.”  Citing the same 1998 report prepared by DOE's Energy Information Administration, Larry Craig said that the impacts on the American economy of implementation would be devastating: “consumer energy prices skyrocket, inflation is up, employment opportunities down, economic growth potential halted.”  These Senators made it clear to Loy that they would fiercely oppose any agreement on Kyoto which they believed would hurt the U.S. economy in any fashion.   Craig and Hagel even made the trip to The Hague to make sure no real cuts were agreed upon.

    While the Clinton Administration has hardly played the much needed leadership role on global warming, the ultimate source of U.S. intransigence on the issue can be traced to the unholy, money-drenched alliance between some of the world’s biggest polluting industries and high-ranking conservative Senators.  So once again we return to the question asked on the protesters’ banner at The Hague: “Industry Lobbyists and the Government Officials Who Do Their Bidding…How Will Our Grandchildren Forgive You?” 

    Our grandchildren will someday pay the price for the failure to address the problem of global warming.  Scientists have already suggested that the erratic weather patterns of recent years may be related to increases in the earth’s average temperature.  Even more dire environmental consequences loom on the horizon.  Please call or write to Senators Hagel, Murkowski, and Craig.  Ask them to stop placing unattainable conditions on any U.S. agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.   Point out that recent studies have shown that emissions cuts can in fact be achieved with little or no harm to the U.S. economy.  Tell them that there is no hope for halting man-made global climate change unless the wealthiest, biggest polluting country in the world takes a principled position that will meet the targets for emissions reductions agreed to at Kyoto.

    The clock is ticking on reaching an agreement before the end of the Clinton Administration.  With the oil industry's dream team headed for the White House, the chances of progress in the next Administration will be even more remote.  Bush has voiced opposition to Kyoto in the past, and until recently denied that global warming even existed.  The recent strategy of U.S. negotiators seems to have been to conclude an agreement in such a way that the upcoming Bush Administration would have been hesitant to abandon it.  Now it is clear that there will be no agreement reached before January 20.  The Bush Administration will likely  follow the lead of congressional Republicans on the issue.  The only hope is to gather enough popular sentiment behind the issue that the Congress will have no choice but to take action.  As the Guardian rightly suggests, "What's needed now is the kind of global protest movement which Jubilee 2000 developed over debt relief. That movement spawned a mass economics lesson on the global finance system, so now we can start on another bit of the curriculum: geography. As Jubilee 2000 draws to a close next month, climate change has been mooted as a possible successor issue."  There is some hope for achieving a global warming treaty as well, but it will require the sustained public attention of the kind generated by Jubilee 2000.  Remember, even conservative Senator Jesse Helms was finally moved on the issue of Third World debt relief.